Claim Raven explanation
What this means
This rule describes psychomotor epilepsy, including seizures that may involve changes in awareness, behavior, movement, or perception. It also addresses associated psychiatric disturbance.
Such episodes are not limited to the kind of generalized convulsion people commonly picture as a seizure. The medical diagnosis and the description of actual events are needed to understand the applicable rating criteria.
How this helps your claim
This helps you organize observations for a clinician or review of an existing examination. Describe the episode and its effects accurately rather than assigning a seizure type yourself.
What to check in your records
Use your decision, examination reports, and relevant records to check the following points.
- Find the neurological diagnosis and description of the seizure type.
- Record observed changes in awareness, behavior, and immediate after-effects.
- Review any associated psychiatric findings and how the decision addressed them.
Describe changes in awareness and behavior accurately
Some seizure events may involve altered awareness or unusual behavior without the convulsions people commonly associate with epilepsy. The record should describe the actual episode and the medical interpretation. Absence of a dramatic visible convulsion should not replace that assessment.
Keep any associated psychiatric findings distinct from the seizure description. Similar-looking behaviors can have different medical explanations. The clinician's diagnosis and the applicable neurological or psychiatric provisions determine how the documented effects are evaluated and whether they overlap.
Does unusual behavior alone establish psychomotor epilepsy?
No. This section describes a medically identified condition and its manifestations, not a diagnosis from behavior alone. Accurate witness observations can inform the assessment, but the medical explanation remains necessary. Do not classify an event as a seizure solely because a description on this page sounds familiar.
Official regulatory text
38 CFR § 4.122
eCFR snapshot: September 3, 2026. Layout and spacing are adapted for reading. The full section and its tables are included below.
§ 4.122 Psychomotor epilepsy.
The term psychomotor epilepsy refers to a condition that is characterized by seizures and not uncommonly by a chronic psychiatric disturbance as well.
(a) Psychomotor seizures consist of episodic alterations in conscious control that may be associated with automatic states, generalized convulsions, random motor movements (chewing, lip smacking, fumbling), hallucinatory phenomena (involving taste, smell, sound, vision), perceptual illusions (deja vu, feelings of loneliness, strangeness, macropsia, micropsia, dreamy states), alterations in thinking (not open to reason), alterations in memory, abnormalities of mood or affect (fear, alarm, terror, anger, dread, well-being), and autonomic disturbances (sweating, pallor, flushing of the face, visceral phenomena such as nausea, vomiting, defecation, a rising feeling of warmth in the abdomen). Automatic states or automatisms are characterized by episodes of irrational, irrelevant, disjointed, unconventional, asocial, purposeless though seemingly coordinated and purposeful, confused or inappropriate activity of one to several minutes (or, infrequently, hours) duration with subsequent amnesia for the seizure. Examples: A person of high social standing remained seated, muttered angrily, and rubbed the arms of his chair while the National Anthem was being played; an apparently normal person suddenly disrobed in public; a man traded an expensive automobile for an antiquated automobile in poor mechanical condition and after regaining conscious control, discovered that he had signed an agreement to pay an additional sum of money in the trade. The seizure manifestations of psychomotor epilepsy vary from patient to patient and in the same patient from seizure to seizure.
(b) A chronic mental disorder is not uncommon as an interseizure manifestation of psychomotor epilepsy and may include psychiatric disturbances extending from minimal anxiety to severe personality disorder (as distinguished from developmental) or almost complete personality disintegration (psychosis). The manifestations of a chronic mental disorder associated with psychomotor epilepsy, like those of the seizures, are protean in character.
Related references
- 38 CFR § 4.1: What a VA disability rating measures
- 38 CFR § 3.159: VA duty to assist: records and examinations
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